So your company is finally ready to put your first influencer marketing campaign to the test. You pick the best person to settle the deal, and then you wait for the results. But the results aren’t quite what you hoped for. In the end, this influencer campaign turned out to be a waste of time. So what went wrong?
Social media is a big part of our daily life, and many people spend a significant portion of their day just scrolling through their feed. It is one of the reasons why social media platforms are excellent to market on.
But instead of battling the algorithm, using an influencer marketing campaign seems like a much better option. However, many influencer campaigns fail or give lackluster results that don’t seem worth it.
Influencer marketing is incredibly effective - a ton of businesses use it to push their brands on a daily basis. The question that you need to ask yourself first is: Is Your Campaign Truly a Failure?
In reality, most influencer campaign failures don’t fail at all. Instead, when you look deeper, you’ll find that companies tend to look at a specific metric to determine success (between us, that’s mostly pure sales numbers) but have setup the campaign to generate great pictures or branded videos from people they believe were a good fit to their brand and had the highest possible audience size for the budget.
Measured by what the campaign was set up for (content and brand exposure), the campaign likely was a success. If the campaign is then considered a failure because the ultimate goal was to reel in sales and that‘s all that counts, then the campaign should have been setup differently in the first place.
So looking at your campaign setup, this article will give you five of the biggest reasons why influencer marketing campaigns don’t work out, and we’ll also tell you how you can fix these mistakes:
1. The Company Doesn’t Establish Their Brand Before They Start to use Influencer Marketing.
When an influencer markets your products, they will point their followers towards your brand and pique their interest. However, if you want people to buy your products, you need to ensure that your company has a bold online presence.
The first set in this process is to set up your website and your social media pages well. Your social media pages are especially significant because that’s the first place that will attract attention.
Furthermore, you need to have reasonable expectations for your campaign. Many companies expect too much content for too little. Being as transparent as possible will help you to form a partnership with the influencer in the future.
2. The Influencer Doesn’t Have a Clear Idea of What They Need to Market.
Although many influencers have a ton of sponsorship deals on their hands, you must keep in mind that you know your company best. An influencer will not know who your product is targeted towards, or they may not understand what’s unique about your brand.
That’s why it’s always a good idea to give the person a rundown of what the campaign is focused on before you begin. Try to keep it simple, and be sure to discuss your strategy before the campaign starts to clear out any doubts that the influencer may have.
3. Companies Tend to Craft Strategies that use the Influencer as a Sales Agent.
Ask yourself, why are influencers popular? It’s because people look up to many of them as role models, or their followers might trust their content and the advice they give.
This type of marketing is a bit more personal, something that companies often seem to have a hard time understandanding. The point of an influencer campaign is to instill trust in your company, but this trust may not always translate to sales.
It‘s the influencers job to get people curious about your brand and products, maybe even curious enough to spread the word further. Influencers might manage to get people curious enough to jump to your brand’s social profile to dig a little deeper, maybe to your website or shop even - maybe now, maybe later.
It‘s not the job of the influencer to sell your product. That is your job and yours alone.
For example, let’s say you’ve sent your product in for a review. In that case, you want the person to be as honest as possible about all the aspects of your product. You could ask them to focus on a few key features of the product. But if your guidelines aren’t flexible enough, the campaign will lose its personal touch.
4. Brands Expect the Influencer Campaign to Work as a Stand-Alone Strategy.
This is a mistake that many companies tend to make. Companies tend to believe that these campaigns are enough to increase sales. But influencers don’t convince their followers to buy your products. Instead, they encourage them to check your brand out.
Influencer campaigns are best used as part of an overarching marketing strategy. These types of campaigns are great for introducing customers to your brand, so you need to back them up with a solid marketing plan.
5. Choosing the Wrong Candidates for the Task
Influencers build their platforms by using their personality and their skills. This is why research is so essential when you’re picking an influencer. Every person will have their own base of followers. In order to appeal to your target audience, need to choose influencers whose following is in line with your target audience (age, gender, country, category,...).
Although a big follower count is important, people who aren’t interested in your product will not be intrigued, won‘t share, won‘t buy. The right candidate will be someone who introduces your brand to people who need it.
At the end of the day, you need to remember that influencer campaign failures are going to happen. There are many intricate details that you need to work out before starting a campaign like this, and a few errors like the ones we’ve given above are bound to slip through the cracks.
Maybe you’ve picked the wrong person, you’re not able to find a ton of people to review your product, or your influence campaign has an integral flaw that you can’t seem to understand. In that case, you need to be persistent and innovative in your approach.
Don’t rush into your next marketing strategy immediately after you’ve done the last one. Instead, take a look at how you can improve and build on your last strategy.
Our blog has a ton of useful information to point you in the right direction. The linkr platform helps to bridge the gap between companies and influencers.
Our wide selection of templates will enable you to skip all the extra steps and get what you’re looking for without any extra hassle from your side. We’ll also give you a way to get in touch with multiple influencers with ease.
It means that you don’t have to waste any time scouring online platforms to find which influencers are the right fit for you, and your company can focus on the actual strategy itself. All you need to do is sign up, and our platform has everything you need to kickstart your influencer campaign.
If you’re looking for a bit of professional help, then you might want to consider signing up for our managed account plan, where a team of experts will help you to get started, avoid the initial mistakes, collect learnings and shorten the time you need to shape your brand‘s influencer marketing setup. Simply contact us at .
